Boarding
by Dailenna
Summary: As a child, Riza never found herself receiving the sort of attention she wanted. Sorely neglected, she would have done almost anything to please her father. Spoilers for chapter 58 to 60.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own FMA D: (Just give it some time . . .)

**Warning:** Spoilers for chapters 57-60.

**Notes:** I've pieced together some of the things that Hawkeye-sensei, Riza and Roy have said that make me think things that may not have been mentioned in fanfiction before. Not in any I've seen anyway (so I apologise to those who have written similar things that I may have overlooked). Their words are made note of at the bottom. To my SSSS readers - I am working on the next chapter. It's about long enough to post, but not finished, so if it doesn't look like it will resolve itself soon I'll turn it into two chapters and post what I have for you. Thank you for being patient :)

* * *

"**Boarding**" by **Dailenna**

While she was young, her father had made sure that she was given a good education. He didn't need her getting in his way around the house, children being curious as they were wont to be. Even if his main endeavour was to get her out from underneath his feet, he made sure he did it properly. Rather than sending her to some two-bit institution on the edges of town, he lashed out on the expense of sending her an upstanding academy in the city. She was hardly one of those primped and pampered little girls with fathers in the government – her father abhorred the leadership of Amestris – but she managed to pass by, unnoticed amongst them.

As far as Riza knew, she had always been a quiet child. If there was any evidence to the contrary, her father had yet to present it to her. The man spent most of his time in his study, researching the wonders of alchemy, and if Riza was any hassle to him, it was in her interruptions. He had pointed out to her more than once, and more sternly of late, that she couldn't just keep barging into his study. He was doing serious work and didn't have time for her. And so that was why Riza was here.

A loud snap sounded on her desk, and Riza jumped, looking up into the eyes of her teacher, who spared her the tiniest glance before continuing with her lecture on the use of nouns and pronouns in the Latin language.

For four years, now, Riza had been boarding here at school. In all this time, she hadn't yet received one word from her father. A housekeeper he had taken on to care for him after Riza was gone had at first sent her letters twice a semester, giving an account of her father's health and habits. The first letter claimed that he had asked the woman to do this when he hired her, undoubtedly because he knew he'd forget it himself. The letters were brief, and spoke of seclusion in his study. The woman wrote that he no longer came out. Meals were to be taken to him there, and he slept by his books at night. Riza hadn't received word since that final letter, almost a year ago now. And yet she was still in school, so she supposed the fees were being paid for in some manner.

It wasn't until the term had ended that anything changed.

It was morning, and the girls at the boarding school were sitting down to their breakfast while the mail was delivered. Riza's eyes were set blankly on the food before her, but her ears listened sharply for her name.

"Look at her, at it again," laughed one of the girls a little further down the table.

Riza's eyes flickered up.

"Always waiting, but she never gets anything."

"You'd think she would have learnt by now."

One of the girls scowled in her direction when she noticed Riza was looking. "Eavesdropping on our conversation, Birdbeak? Get out of it." She picked up the spoon that was sitting in her porridge and flicked it in Riza's direction.

Riza jerked away as the splatter of porridge spotted her uniform and face. Little drops were scattered over her clothes and skin, and she could see some caught in her fringe. With a frown, she ran her fingers through her hair, getting the gunk out while the other girls rolled their eyes and returned to their conversation. None of the students around her seemed to pay any attention.

When they filed out of the breakfast room later, one of the teachers approached her. "Miss Hawkeye, what is that mess on your uniform?"

"It's porridge, miss."

"I could tell that," the woman snapped back at her. "How did it get there? Ugh, never mind that. Go change quickly and wash your face. The headmistress wants to see you. Be quick, so she doesn't have to punish you for being tardy."

"Yes, miss."

The headmistress was impatient when Riza arrived.

"I'm not accustomed to being kept waiting, Miss Hawkeye," she said.

"No, miss, I apologise."

A dark eyebrow rose. "Hold out your hand."

Silently, Riza held out her right hand. She clenched her teeth as the woman's rod came down sharply on her palm twice.

"Very well." The headmistress set aside the thin pointing stick and took up an open letter on her desk. "I have received a letter from your father, saying that you are to return home during the holidays. He can't come and fetch you himself, but if one of the teachers escorts you to the station, he will pick you up on the other end."

Stunned, Riza couldn't speak. Four years in this school, and now without sending word to her himself, her father was going to have her back for the holidays? She could only assume that he had finished his research. Either that, or his budget no longer allowed for the price of food and accommodation for her during holidays.

"So on Saturday Miss Turnbull will take you to the station. You father has sent your train ticket with his letter, and so that you do not lose it between now and then, I will hold onto it and Miss Turnbull will give it to you before you board the train. That will be all."

"Thank you, miss," Riza replied.

"You may leave."

* * *

On the train home, Riza found herself in a carriage with a couple and their son. When they saw she was alone, the man and his wife felt sorry for her, and made conversation. The woman gave her son a nudge and told him to be polite, but the boy plainly sulked and said he didn't want to talk to a girl. Riza took it all in her stride. 

When the train pulled up at the platform, the family bade her goodbye, and she waited for the crowd to disperse, young eyes scanning faces. A haggard, yet familiar face caught her eyes and she started towards her father.

"Riza?" he asked, when she approached him.

She nodded.

"You look different."

"I'm twelve, now, father," she reminded him.

"Ah, yes. Come along, then."

He took her by the hand, and they made their way past the last stragglers and out to the car. Riza was surprised when her father hefted her suitcase into the boot of the car for her, rather than absentmindedly continuing to his seat without her having to remind him. When she climbed into the car, she made sure to buckle her seatbelt. Due to his usual inattention, Mr. Hawkeye's driving skills were not something to be envied.

"How do you like your school?"

Riza looked up in surprise. Normally her father wasn't one to make awkward conversation. "It serves its purpose."

"And you have friends there?"

"I suppose." Although she wouldn't really call them friends.

"Good. Good."

It didn't take long to settle back in at home. Her room had been tidied, by the housekeeper, she at first supposed, before her father told her that he had had to let the woman go for snooping. In the first few days alone, Riza noticed that her father was acting differently. Over time, instead of closeting himself in his office, he was checking up on her every now and then. He made them breakfast, and they made lunch and dinner together. When they went shopping he bought her new clothes and books.

A week into the holidays, he brought up the topic of his research with her. She asked him how it was coming along.

"Oh, very well, very well. I finished it two months ago, in fact, and have been reviewing it ever since." He paused for a moment. "Riza, it's very dangerous alchemy I can't just have it lying around anywhere."

She blinked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I wonder if . . . if you would help me."

Riza was surprised. Alchemy was her father's domain – he hadn't allowed her to look into it when she was younger. To be true, the only curiosity she had had with it was because it was his business and not her own. "Yes, father. How can I help?"

The beginnings of a relieved smile inched onto his face. "I was thinking that you could help conceal my notes. You see, I've been able to compact them into one powerful array, and I thought that if I paint them onto your back–"

"But won't it wash off?"

"A- A tattoo, Riza."

She frowned. "Wouldn't that hurt?"

"Only for a while. It would stop in time. Do you think you'd be able to bear a little pain, to help me?" He looked at her, expression filled with the eager light she remembered from when he mentioned his work to her mother, before she died.

Her father never usually paid so much attention to her. It was fitting that the reason he did was because of his alchemy research. She paused only for a minute, deciding that if helping him meant this attention would continue, she could bear some pain.

"A-alright."

* * *

When she returned to school, five weeks later, there was no sign of the fire that had raged over her body during the holidays. No sign of the weeks she had spent in agony, training herself to sleep on her stomach because of the pain she felt when she rolled onto her back. To anyone's eye, she may have been ill recently, but was otherwise a perfectly normal young girl. 

Her father provided a note to the school asking that she was exempt from swimming, although it was hardly necessary.

He had doted upon her while she was in his care. Although, she had noticed that the majority of his questions centred on how she was recovering from the tattoo and the fainting spells the blood-loss had given her. He told her that he'd have her home from school for the next term holiday as well, to make sure that she was faring well. A down-hearted Riza knew that it was just to check up on his research and make sure that it was still there – still intact.

And so when she arrived back at the station months later, she was surprised not to see him there. Waiting until the place was empty still did not reveal him, and the only other person at the station, a black-haired teenager, approached her.

"Are you Hawkeye-sensei's daughter?"

She looked him up and down warily. "Who are you?"

The boy smiled, having taken her answer as a yes. "I'm his student, Roy Mustang. He sent me to come and get you."

Riza had not heard that her father had taken on a pupil, but he never wrote to her in any case, so she didn't see how she would have heard. After ascertaining that he seemed trustworthy enough, she gave a decisive nod and followed him to the car outside.

Roy Mustang looked too young to drive a car, but after questioning him meticulously, she learnt that he was seventeen and had been driving his own father's car for the past two years when he went home for holidays. Whether his father knew that or not was another matter. Riza pieced the information together and understood that Mustang had been training beneath her father for at least those two years.

At home, Riza made sure to greet her father politely. The man gave her a nod of acknowledgement and turned immediately to Mustang.

"I have need of some things in town," he said, handing a list over to his student. "Go and fetch them for me, and you can return to your studies afterwards."

The look Mustang gave her father told Riza that the boy thought he could have just as easily found these things while he was out picking up Riza from the train station. Nevertheless, he took the list and said "Yes, Hawkeye-sensei," leaving without a complaint.

Soon after the door closed, Hawkeye turned to Riza, who had begun to climb the stairs in order to put her suitcase in her room.

"Riza, come show me the array. Is it still in good condition?"

"Yes, father."

By the time the apprentice had returned, Riza was in her room, silently putting clothes on their hangers.

* * *

The next few years were spent in much the same fashion. During term she would be at school, wearing an unflattering uniform and avoiding taunts. During the holidays she would go home, spending her time more pleasantly by herself than with her father. The attention she had thought the tattoo would gain her was directed towards her back, rather than to her face. Her father's student would be there in the middle of the year, but went to spend time with his own family in the end of year holidays 

Mustang treated her politely for the most part, but called her by her first name. Riza didn't mind, but carefully called him Mr. Mustang, keeping him at arms-length. He was a nice young man, and although he was usually taking lessons from her father when he was present, she preferred the weeks when he was there to those when he was not.

When she was fifteen her father pulled her out of school. He told her that they could not afford it anymore, but the money he received for Mustang's tuition was enough that he could employ a new housekeeper – so that Riza did not feel obliged to do all the work, he told her. Most days she would study the books in their library that hadn't been sold yet.

One year, Mustang returned from visiting his family in military uniform. Riza eyed him warily through the window, knowing that her father would not be pleased. Hawkeye did not try to keep his opinions about the military close to himself, and she had often heard Mustang talking with him about the matter.

He did not see her, but let himself in, as he usually did. The sound of his footsteps carried him past the library door, and to her father's study. Riza buried her head in her book.

It was only a matter of minutes before she heard raised voices. Or one raised voice, at the very least. Riza's ears perked up, listening for trouble. Soon there was another yell, and Riza set down her book, rushing to the study in time to hear "_Someone call a doctor!! Is anyone here?!!_"

Mustang was trying to lift up her father to transport him to a doctor, she supposed, when she reached the doorway. Riza watched in horror as one of her father's arms was hung limply over the boy's – no, _man's_ – neck, and his head lolled on the side, eyes rolled back and blood dripping from his mouth.

Mustang paused, shocked. "_Riza!_"

* * *

The funeral was only a few days later. Riza visited the grave accompanied by Mustang, not knowing whether she was relieved or whether she wanted to dig through the dirt and unearth the man who had never spoken to her more than he deemed necessary. The man who had only looked at her to see his work on her back. The man who treated her like a tool for his use rather than like the daughter she was. 

"If anything happens," Mustang told her, "you can visit the military authorities anytime. I'll probably be in the military for life." He handed her a card with an address and phone number on it.

"For life?" She examined the card carefully, trying to memorise the numbers and words on it.

"Yes."

"Please don't die," she said unsteadily. If he did the one contact she had in the world would disappear.

Mustang blanched. "Don't say such ominous things . . ." The topic of his mortality was evidently more touchy than usual, now that he was a military soldier and the likelihood of his living past twenty-five had dropped incredibly.

"I can't guarantee it. Some day in this occupation I might just die on the side of the road like a piece of trash. Even so," he said, his face becoming pensive, "if I could become one of this country's foundation stones and be able to protect everyone with these hands I think I'll be happy. That's the reason why I learnt alchemy, but . . . in the end I wasn't able to be taught Sensei's secrets."

Riza's face almost echoed his as she paused to think on his words. He was an honourable man, with good intentions and with a dream of peace. She didn't know the intricacies of her father's research, but she remembered him telling her it was the most powerful kind of alchemy there was. If . . . If Roy Mustang really meant to protect the people of their country, was it really such a bad thing to show him? The image of her father's stern figure burst into her mind, wagging one finger in her face and telling her that under no conditions was she ever to show her back to anyone. The safety of the people was at stake. But Roy meant to use it for good . . .

"Sorry," he said embarrassedly, "I ended up speaking of my naïve dream."

"No. I think it's a wonderful dream," Riza told him, looking at her father's headstone as though she was telling the dead man as well. "The secrets my father left behind . . . He said that they were written in a code no average alchemist would be able to decipher." Unless he was truly a genius, he wouldn't be able to use the array and no mistakes would be able to be made with it. If he could understand it, he would have the brains to know how to use it safely.

Mustang shifted his weight beside her. "So Sensei left behind his manuscripts after all . . ."

Riza shook her head slightly. "No," she said once again. "They're not manuscripts. He said it would be a problem if his life's research disappeared or was taken by an outsider."

"How did he leave them behind?"

There was hesitance in her voice as she spoke, knowing full well what she was doing. "Mr. Mustang. That dream . . . Can I entrust my back to it?"

* * *

_Thank you for reading. These are the comments the characters said and how I used it in my story:_

_In chapter 58 Roy says that the state qualification could allow Hawkeye-sensei to further his research. Hawkeye-sensei says that he finished his research a long time ago, but Roy's mentioning it implies Hawkeye-sensei mentioned working on it around him. So I assume that means it was not finished until after Roy became Hawkeye-sensei's student._

_Also in chapter 58 when Roy is calling for help, he says "IS ANYONE HERE?!!" and is surprised when Riza appears, which implies that he expected someone** else** to be there other than Riza. For that reason, I made sure that he didn't see her before proceeding to Hawkeye-sensei's study, and I mentioned that Hawkeye-sensei had hired a new housekeeper since Riza was removed from school. Roy was expecting a servant to be there, not his teacher's daughter._

_In chapter 60 Riza says that her father made sure she was well educated. I'm not sure of the standards of education for Arakawa's world, but I can see Riza's busy alchemist of a father sending her somewhere like a boarding school to keep her out from under his feet._

_In chapter 21 Izumi is surprised by how young the Elric brothers are, and wanting to learn alchemy. While I don't doubt Roy was an intelligent little kid, I assume that the normal age for alchemy lessons begin a lot later than the Elrics took theirs. I'm fairly certain Roy isn't (or wasn't) an orphan at the time, and Hawkeye-sensei is a man, so the maternal instincts wouldn't be kicking in. I think Roy would have started learning while he was a young teen, and I've made it so in this story (13-15)._

_(edit 6th Feb) Just remembered another one. In chapter 59 and in the chapter 60 Riza calls Roy 'Mr. Mustang'. This seems to imply either a formality put in place by her father, or her own distant nature - which would be possible in a neglected child who has reacted to the abuse that way - or she and Roy just haven't had a lot of contact with each other, so they're still on distant terms. Roy, however, calls her 'Riza' in Chapter 58, so either the formality isn't imposed on his side, or he feels more familiar with her than she does with him, reinforced in this story by the lack of communication Riza has with her father (thus she doesn't hear about Roy except during holidays) and Roy's connection with the man, which leads to the possibility Hawkeye-sensei mentioned her to him, providing him with a false sense of intimacy. Considering how eager Hawkeye-sensei is about his research, it's possible he mentioned his daughter, and not mentioned the tattoo because he has sense enough to hide that from his student._

_That's all :) Thanks for reading this mess as well, and please review to let me know what you think!_


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